Thur 01 October 2020
By Jayne He
UNSW Law’s China International Business and Economic Law (CIBEL) Centre member Dr Weihuan Zhou has been promoted to Associate Professor effective from 1 January 2021.
Joining UNSW Law in 2015, Dr Zhou is an inaugural member of CIBEL. He has a great interest in the field of international economic law, with research focuses on WTO laws, Customs law especially trade remedies, free trade agreements, Chinese commercial law, China’s regulations of international trade and investment, China’s integration into the international and regional economic order.
Weihuan has published widely in the field of international economic law and most of top journals in this field such as the Journal of International Economic Law, the World Trade Review, the Journal of World Trade, the International & Comparative Law Quarterly, Legal Issues of Economic Integration, just to name a few. His work has been cited in the European Parliament briefings, reports of the Parliament of Australia and Australia’s Productivity Commission and by leading scholars in the field.
His latest monograph China's Implementation of the Rulings of the World Trade Organization published by Hart Publishing in late 2019 provided the first comprehensive and systemic analysis of China's compliance with the rulings of the WTO's dispute settlement mechanism (DSM).
As an expert in WTO laws and international economic law, Dr Zhou makes impact to the society by expressing his views through op-ed articles and interviews with media towards topical issues within his research field. He has taken numerous interviews on the recent Australia-China trade tensions with ABC Radio, Australia Financial Review, SBS Mandarin, The Guardian, Associate Press, South China Morning Post, etc. His op-ed pieces on The Conversation has been translated and cited by Global Times.
He is frequently invited to speak at high-level professional and academic events. Recently, he has been invited to speak at the Geneva Trade Week, the Cato Institute, the International Law Colloquium 2019 hosted by the Attorney-General’s Department of Australia, and has served as a panellist in the 17th edition of the John H. Jackson Moot Court Competition 2019 Asia-Pacific Regional Rounds in Singapore.
One of his current projects, titled “Between Market Economy and State Capitalism: China’s State-Owned Enterprises and the World Trading System” in collaboration with Associate Professor Henry Gao from Singapore Management University has recently secured the European Studies of Macau Grants 2020 and a book contract with Cambridge University Press. This project was one of the six CIBEL Seed Grant projects in 2019.
Dr Zhou was a trade and commercial lawyer at a top-tier Australian law firm in Sydney before his career in academia. In that capacity, he acted for foreign government, industry associations, and major companies in many trade remedy cases, investment transactions and other commercial matters. Before that, he was a consultant at the WTO Secretariat. He is a qualified lawyer in Australia and continues to consult for leading Australian law firms on foreign trade and investment matters alongside his academic pursuits.
A full list of Dr Zhou’s recent research, media engagement and event participations may by found on the Publication page of the CIBEL website.